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At Flights, good things come in threes.
In fact, every dish comes in three. Order French fries and you’ll get truffle, garlic and sweet potato. Meatballs? Look for a plate of Swedish lingonberries, Italian marinara and pineapple teriyaki meatballs. Want a martini to chase it all down? Expect one cucumber, one Gibson and one dirty.
Flights owner Alex Hult opened the first tapas-style restaurant in Campbell last year, then in Los Gatos and Burlingame and now, in downtown Mountain View. Hult has taken over 800 California St. #100, where Indian restaurant Shiva’s recently closed.
Flights will open this fall at the corner of California and Castro streets in Mountain View. Photo by Elena Kadvany.
Hult is a former professional hockey and poker player from Sweden, where his mother ran several restaurants. He opened his first restaurant in 2013: Hult’s Restaurant, which served upscale Swedish-California cuisine. He closed Hult’s and turned it into a Flights restaurant earlier this year.
At Hult’s, he noticed more and more customers sharing appetizers as their meals rather than entrees. This, combined with his own observations of our increasingly busy lives and an alluring cocktail flight on his honeymoon in Hawaii, gelled into the idea for a restaurant that would encourage a shared experience.
“Basically it’s a gimmicky thing that gives people a reason to talk to each other and laugh about it,” Hurt said. “It creates a reaction. It forces people to interact with each other.”
At Flights, everything comes as three appetizer-sized servings. “Order one get all three,” the menu reads.
A meatballs trio served at Flights. Photo courtesy Flights.
The menu is focused on comfort food: hot dogs, pizza, tacos, grilled cheese, salads, sliders. Desserts include cast-iron cookies, ice cream, beignets and pie.
The Mountain View restaurant will have the same menu as the other locations.
Flights serves lunch, dinner and brunch. The restaurants do not take reservations; seating is first come, first served.
Hult hopes to be open in Mountain View by late September.
He’s also negotiating to open inside a hotel on the Las Vegas strip and said he plans to turn Flights into a national franchise, with locations in major cities and airports.